For the next video, I'll try to learn more phrases by heart and look less at the prompter screen for a more natural feel. I apologize for my German accent (some people say it adds credibility :) ). Still, people seem to like the video, at least it has been viewed about 200 times already.

There's a lot of discussion around the Sun Storage 7000, most of it is very positive. In Germany, we like to complain a lot so of course we also hear a lot of constructive criticism. Most of the comments I hear fall into one of the two following categories:

The Storage 7000 systems are cool, but I know ZFS/OpenSolaris can do "X" and I really want this to be in the Storage 7000 GUI as well!
Yes, we know that there are still many features we'd like to see in the Storage 7000 and we're working on making them available. Make sure your Sun contact knows about your wishlist, so she can forward it to our engineers. Please remember that the Storage 7000 systems are meant to be easy-to-use appliances: Taking your "X" feature from ZFS/OpenSolaris and building a GUI around it is a hard thing to do, especially if you want it to work reliably and if you want it to be self-explanatory and self-serviceable. Please be patient, we're most probably working on your favourite features already.

The Storage 7000 systems are cool, but I want more control. I want to change the hardware/hack them/take them apart/add more functionality/get them to do exactly what I want, etc.
Sure, that feature is called "OpenSolaris". Please go to OpenSolaris.org, download the CD, install it on your favourite hardware and off you go!But, can I have the GUI, too, maybe as an SDK of some sort?
No. The Storage 7000 systems are not "just a GUI". They are full-blown appliances which means that they're more than just the hardware and a GUI. A big part of the ease-of-use, stability, performance and predictability of these products is in the way configuration options are selected, tested and yes, limited, as well as a careful consideration of which features to implement at what time and which not. Only then comes the GUI on top, which is tailored to the overall product as a whole. In other words: You wouldn't go to BMW and ask them to give you their dashboard, radio and the lights so you can bolt them onto a Volkswagen, would you?

You see, either you build your own storage machine out of the building blocks you have, and get all the functionality and flexibility you want at the expense of some configuration effort,
or you buy the car as a whole, nice, round, sweet package, so you don't worry about configuration, implementation details, complexity, etc. Asking for anything in between will get you into trouble: Either you'll spend more effort than you want, or you won't get the kind of control you want.